The Eighteenth Angel

A prophecy claims that the return of Satan will be precipitated by the arrival of eighteen physically perfect beings. To enable the prophecy come to fruition, a secret sect of monks join an obsessed geneticist to artificially create the perfect specimens.

Hugh Stanton and his daughter Lucy have lost their wife and mother - seemingly to suicide - after a brief meeting with a mysterious Etruscan man. In the aftermath of her death, Hugh decides to move from America to Rome, where he and Lucy settle down in the former Etruscan areas north of the Eternal City.

With little to do while her father is at work, Lucy begins to explore her surroundings - in particular an old monastery, despite warnings from locals. A scientist (who was fired after performing unethical experiments on corpses), now works in the old building. As it transpires, he has been hired by the Etruscan man, who it is insinuated, may have killed the girl's mother, in order to trick Hugh and Lucy into visiting the ancient land of the Etruscans.

In the old building, seventeen young girls, are clinically brain dead, but kept alive by the scientist. The scientist, unaware of his employer’s true intentions, is just glad to be able to continue his questionable experiments, regardless.

According to the Etruscan prophecy, the number of eighteen special girls are required for it to be fulfilled. Could Lucy be number eighteen?

• Christopher McDonald as Hugh Stanton
• Rachael Leigh Cook as Lucy Stanton
• Stanley Tucci as Todd Stanton
• Wendy Crewson as Norah Stanton
• Maximilian Schell as Father Simeon

Nathan Rabin of The A.V. Club was critical of film writing that the "mixture of the Satanic and the mundane results in a number of conceits and juxtapositions generally more silly than terrifying" and that it fails "to create the atmosphere of Old Testament dread that the material so desperately needs."[1]

• The Eighteenth Angel at IMDb
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• PopMatters